Wondering about the best smart contracts platforms for 2021?
That’s an excellent market with many opportunities of investments to be explored.
According to a study, “The global blockchain market size is expected to grow from USD 3.0 billion in 2021 to USD 39.7 billion by 2025, at an impressive Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 67.3% during 2021–2025”. I bet you had no idea of that kind of massive dominance the smart contract market is exploiting now....Besides all the money to be made by savvy investors and blockchain developers, smart contracts really represent a new gold rush in software development where companies can make it big overnight.
A BRIEF REVIEW OF CRYPTOCURRENCY FLUCTUATIONS
We all know that 2017 was the year of the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin and the so-called “altcoins” underwent one of the most dramatic price rises the world has ever seen.
This led to a surge of interest in cryptocurrency investment as well as in the blockchain technology that underwrites them.
Relatively few of these people are aware that 2017 was also a great year for the ICO. ICOs or Initial Coin Offerings netted companies a staggering $6 billion in 2017.
It is blockchain-based smart contract platforms that make these ICOs possible. While this might seem impressive, this figure was surpassed in just the first 4 months of 2018. So, experts expected 2018 to be the year of the ICO.
Sadly, thanks to the collapse of the cryptocurrency market, it wasn’t meant to be. 2019 saw Bitcoin recover to around the $15,000+ mark, despite spending a good portion of the summer at around $9,000.
The bitcoin market seems to be holding at a steady $10,000 so far in 2020. However, problems with U.S regulators that led to many of the main companies abandoning the hot new crypto Libera, resulted in many investors holding off on investing any more in Bitcoin.
All this caused the ICO market to stagnate.
HOW DO SMART CONTRACTS WORK?
Smart contracts are digital contracts that allow two or more separate parties to enter into an agreement. The beauty of a smart contract is that they don‘t require any outside or third party to control transactions. So in other words, smart contracts are big money schemes that involve agreements between two parties.....I call smart contracts a big money scheme because people actually earn massively but at the same time the only actual way one can really earn is by marketing and thats why i refer to it as a scheme.
Smart contracts are blockchain-based and use a network of peers to process and maintain the database. For practical reasons, companies are not likely to want to pursue setting up their own network but instead rely on those already being operated by smart contract organizations like Ethereum.
THE BEST 5 SMART CONTRACT PLATFORMS
Ethereum
While most people are aware of the Ethereum Project through its token, Ethereum or Ether or ERC-20, many are not aware that this is one of the most exciting startups in the last decade or two. It is the world‘s leading smart contract platform and is the top choice for most developers.
The beauty of Ethereum‘s smart contract platform is the degree of standardization and support it offers. Ethereum has published a set of clearly defined rules for developers to follow, making smart contract development easier and less risky.
Hyperledger Fabric
Top of the list of Ethereum’s competitors is Hyperledger Fabric. The Hyperledger project began in December 2015 and was set up by the Linux Foundation. It is an open-source project that has the stated goal of supporting the development of blockchain-based distributed ledgers.
There are now several different frameworks being developed under the Hyperledger banner. These include Hyperledger Burrow, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Sawtooth and Hyperledger Indy.
Nem
Nem was launched on March 31, 2015. It is favored by some developers because it is written in Java, one of the most used programming languages in the world.
Why Use Nem
This makes it super accessible since it doesn‘t require programmers to have to learn platform-specific programming language such as Solidity etc.
A second thing worth noting is that Java is far more developed and therefore has fewer security vulnerabilities than the newer platform-specific languages like Solidity.
Nem recently released the Catapult or Mijin v.2 update, which according to numerous security experts, has made it the most secure smart contract platform out there.
Stellar
Stellar was founded back in 2014, making it one of the oldest smart contract platforms. It is maintained by the Stellar Development Foundation and has been repeatedly heralded as one of the most exciting blockchain startups out there.
A slew of recent good news stories that involve large companies deciding to implement the Stellar platform into their existing infrastructure has convinced industry experts that the Stellar network is really going places.
and then finally,
Waves
Another one of the best alternative smart contract platforms, Waves was launched in June 2016. It is an open-source platform that aimed to address many of the existing barriers that stand in the way of more mainstream blockchain implementation, namely speed and scalability.
all these platforms are big deals for both developers and investors as related to the modern society
research shows that as at 2025, half of the world will be paperless in the sense that money will become digital and there will be more diverse digitalized systems.
thanks for your time...I hope you read and understood the point of the article, take a little time and reason the outcome of taking steps in investing in the smart contract market.
pls, do well to like the article and drop some comments and a little token for encouragement. in my next article, I'll be talking about the easiest ways to enter the smart contract market and hit it big. stay tuned